Antti Pulkkinen

Open Product Development

Open Product Development Methodology is the future of design methodology. It contains three phases: 1. Proactive, strategy-based construction of product development knowledge 2. Fast, efficient product development utilising the right resources 3. Guarantee of product life-cycle knowledge. Each phase has its own methods, of which the following are presented in this chapter: Company Strategic Landscape, Product Family Design and Configuration Process, and the Combined Variation of Product, Manufacturing Processes and Networks. It is important to strengthen the head designer’s role and that the Product Architect takes new responsibilities in design, such as in the environmental review stage.

Case Study on Engineering Change Management and Digital Manufacturing

Improved engineering change management (ECM) has been recognized as one of the major gain areas in manufacture. Digital Manufacturing (DM) is proposed as a means for improved ECM. This paper introduces the preliminary findings of a case study in manufacturing industry. The main proposed development targets include: Integrated PLM architecture and processes, parallel product structures, baseline structure for virtual prototypes, richer information model, and re-designed product development process. The results are categorized in the dimensions of internal and external functions, new product development and standard production, corrective changes and betterment, physical and virtual product. The novelty of this paper within PLM research emerges from the nature of business and focused product development processes of the case, because majority of related literature is related to mass production.

Role of VR Throughout the Life of Low Volume Products Towards Digital Extended Enterprises

This paper discusses the role of virtual reality from the perspective of PLM, based on several industrial case studies. As a result of the research a virtual reality in PLM utilization model is proposed. The proposed model regards virtual reality value creation and prerequisites from PLM perspective. Utility of the model is discussed from business management point of view.

A Follow-up Case Study of the Relation of PLM Architecture, Maturity and Business Processes

This paper presents findings of two research projects, which study current PLM practices and future PLM challenges of global manufacturing companies.This study focuses on maturity of PLM adoption, PLM system architectures and integrations between the tools and seeks a better understanding of a real business phenomenon by comparing case companies to models presented in literature. Data was collected by interviews and benchmarking sessions in six plus three companies in two projects. The companies are categorized by using a four level PLM maturity model.This research indicates that the PLM adoption maturity and architecture models are related to the effectiveness of PLM usage. Service and project businesses seem to be challenging aspects. This is because PLM systems are mainly used in beginning of life activities of the product. In the future also the end of life and middle of life activities should receive more support from the tools and software.

Characterising the Industrial Context of Engineering Change Management

Engineering changes (EC) and their management (ECM) can be categorized from several points of view. In this paper an EC is mainly considered from the position in lifecycle of the object of change: NPD vs. serial production. The performance aspects of engineering change processes emphasize the balancing of speed of the processes and the communication and assessment of consequent changes. ECM practices are studied by comparing two case companies. The cases indicate ECM is highly related to the organization, history and strategy of a company. The increased efficiency in engineering changes is aspired by streamlined ECM in new product development, while enhanced ECM processes apparently batch ECs for increased overall effectivity. The mutual challenge for the studied companies is that the NPD projects result with a set of change requests for serial production.

Case Study on the Relation of PLM Maturity, Architecture and Business Processes

A study focusing on the three factors of product lifecycle management (PLM) is being presented. The selected factors are maturity of adoption, systems’ architectures and product lifecycle (PLC) related businesses. The research material comes from six globally operating companies. The applied data collection method is the synthesis of interviews, benchmarking, and peer-reviewing the case companies. The material is analyzed with the application of comparative case study method. Modern PLM systems manage the data of fixed product items and the configuration knowledge of product families. Thus, companies with the most mature PLM approach are able to enhance the product configuration oriented business processes with legacy PLM architectures. Most of the studied companies are transforming their to single source architecture. This may be a challenge for some of the businesses. Another challenge is the increasing share of service related PLC businesses, which is also supported by the most mature PLM approaches.

Record from 2nd Group Work

The second day begun with a presentation of a method called Product Family Master Plan by N.H. Mortensen from Technical University of Denmark. It was followed by two presentations on matrix tools and a presentation on commonality indices. After these presentations a third group work took place.

Record from 2 nd Group Work

The group work section followed the presentations of the papers by Smith & Duffy, Lange & Aslund, and McKay et al. Thus, the discussion was very much related to issues of knowledge capturing and re-use, quality, and data structuring. Some of the highlights from the discussion have been captured in the following pages.

Conclusions and Discussion for Further Research

Remarks on the state of Product Structuring research are given. A framework on directions and levels on Modular Engineering is presented. Demands and wishes for future research topics are listed.

Workshop Structure and Comments from Discussion

In this section, the workshop framework, working procedure and the contents are examined. Short overview on the papers and presentations is given. The framework is based on procedural view on Design for Configuration. Two other structures for the contents are presented. These are supposed to help the reader to link the papers to product structuring research and to each other.